


Per hanc Dīlēctam Urbem Aeternam [1]

by deprofundisclamavi



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 15:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2434091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deprofundisclamavi/pseuds/deprofundisclamavi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius revisits Rome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Per hanc Dīlēctam Urbem Aeternam [1]

True Rome is a spirit, a relic, a moment in time that I purposefully and painstakingly forced to exist now only within the private realm of memory. Though not always part of my fondest recollections, Rome nonetheless remained an indelible part of me as much as my blue eyes and blonde hair. 

Marius de Rōmānus. Marius the Roman. Marius de Rōmā. Marius from Rome. Out of Rome. Separated from Rome.

Fragmented remnants of Rome were all that I would allow myself. Really, it was all that I could allow, and so I often gave in to soothing solitude with them as my only companion, losing myself completely within the sweet or amusingly crude words of antiquity’s finest poets. 

“Uxōrem nolo Telesinam ducere: quare? Moecha est. Sed pueris dat Telesina: volo.” [2]

A millennium and a half of time, tedious and painstaking time, had passed since I last lived in the city of Rome. Something about the fallen Roman world, pieces of dust and ornament within a landscape of throbbing and noisy modernity, broke my heart. Much like the monuments crumbling to chalky dust, my heart was irreparable. So I handled it as one would handle any delicate artifact: with the greatest of care and even, in a way, respect for the ancient stories encased within.

Cars drove upon roads that I could remember walking on as a mortal man, the very same roads. Upon the horizon were cascading monuments, tourist attractions, nothing more than scattered pieces of what was left too broken to be taken as spolia by looters, palaces, and churches through the centuries. 

Those were the seven hills, there was where the house I grew up in was once built to stand strong and Patrician, and over there the house I resided in after I had left Pandora, its foundations buried under a modern apartment building. There was the ground on which I met my first love, had my first drink of sour wine mixed with honey, laughed with friends, played with fake wooden swords with other children my age, and broke one of my childhood teeth. 

Those places were gone, utterly gone to ashes and ruin, and what good were they now? Of what lasting value? They were frozen pictures or frames of a film that ran in an eternal and incessant loop, stunted and fractured, over and over the same history in repeat. They were part of a movie that only I could see; the mere shadow of a ghost impressed upon real life, growing ever fainter and more elusive. In my head, the two worlds of past and present existed stacked upon one another, but it was with a disorientating effect that left me mentally reeling and wishing for some purchase, something tangible upon which my mind could grasp and pleasantly linger, a thing sweet and immortal, both lasting and serene.

It brought to mind recollections of darker memories. In the course of three terrible nights, Rome was gone.

Yes, I could remember the end of Rome as if it happened yesterday—it stood out that clear, that abrupt. Alaric and his tribe of Visigoths stormed through the Aurelian Walls in 410CE, entering the “Eternal City” by the Porta Salaria that was now demolished and made into the Piazza Fiume. The marauding Visigoths spent days looting, burning, and pillaging, preserving only a handful of Christian relics. 

Hundreds upon hundreds of merciless Christian hands tore down the center of the lingering Pagan world, crushing the last breath of a long-suffering and dying remnant. Rome was decimated because it was weak and could present no effective defense against the barbarian hordes. The Empire’s once mighty military could no longer withstand the assault of Barbarians pressing upon its borders, far outnumbering the Roman military, as they fled the violence of the Huns in the East. 

Admittedly, Rome had abused the trust of the barbarian refugees that it promised to help. In retribution, Alaric stormed Rome and the Eastern Empire looked on passively.

Pagans immediately denounced all Christians because the Visigoths, those cruel and devastating invaders, were themselves named Christian converts. Pagan tongues declared that the old Gods had allowed this to happen because Rome and the Roman people abandoned its religious history and tradition in favor of Christ the Lord and his Father, God. 

Naturally, learned Christian men were also quick to deny the blame placed upon Christians. 

What words were there adequate enough to truly describe my horror when I read St. Augustine’s De Civitate Die, which was quite clear in its shameless and unapologetic assertion: Lust for dominance and power had destroyed Rome, not Christians or barbarians, and the only eternal city was the City of God, not the Roman City of Vice.

Yet there were Christians who suffered the same as the Pagans, together sharing the realization that what was lost was more than just a few treasures and homes, but the very center of a believed timeless identity and strength. Mea Rōma, nostra Rōma. Glorious Rome, which had ruled for centuries with unquestionable power and supremacy. St. Jerome, for all of his bizarre and twisted misogyny, said that when Rome perished, the world perished with it. The Vandals moved through the West, down into Spain and finally, by the Straits of Gibraltar, into North Africa, which was scarcely protected. In North Africa, the Vandals closed off the grain trade and Rome starved. The Vandals, Alans, and Suevi partitioned off Spain and shared in its spoils. The Franks, the Burgundians, and the Alamans took Gaul, while the Lombards seized the Balkans and the Ostrogoths moved into Northern Italy.

It was just death and misery. A misery from which Europe would not recover for a thousand years. If the earth itself could have shrieked like an angry banshee denied its own demise, then Rome would have screamed loud enough for the world to hear. But silent, its death was but a pathetic whimper barely heard in the thriving, Christian east. Those were events for history textbooks and television specials, but no one present here in Rome could relate to the sense of loss or pain that had afflicted this land centuries ago, though it was indeed their city. They were stories part of a past undoubtedly respected and preserved, and even loved, but not attached to personally. 

But I ached.

Vērē, Rōma semper caput mundī erit. [3]

++++++++++++++++++++

Rome called to me because it is eternal. I did not hearken to it, but now I had a more important motivation to compel me to finally listen and to come. I had come for him, one singular precious mortal. By all rights, it was a hasty maneuver on my part. I barely knew this boy, only of him, yet curiosity led me to an ancient and painful theater of touristry that no one and nothing before could force me.

A strange thing, indeed. 

There was something in me stirring, something that I had almost forgotten existed. It was an extraordinary and swelling emotion, charming but consuming. Immeasurable time had passed since I had felt this way, so I clung to it and sought outs its fruition. It was a blossom, a bud that I had to nurture tenderly in order to see it bloom to its full and fragrant form. 

It could come to nothing, certainly, but something in me wanted this to be significant. I was on the very brink of something life changing; I could feel it like static in the air.

There were no walls to stop me, no gates barring my way. There was no Porta Collina, the gate that had been the subject of whispers and legends because it was the very one Hannibal himself camped in sight of, only deterred by the flying visage of his brother’s head sailing toward camp. Rome did not make enemies lightly, or cower to them. 

As a child, to make sure I behaved properly and went to bed when told, the slave who was my nurse would whisper to me that Hannibal comes at night to steal bad little boys from their beds.

Sit Rōmāna potēns Ītala virtūte prōpāgō. [4]

++++++++++++++++++++

I found myself where the old Vicus Tuscus was once located, an antique street that had led from the Forum Romanum to the Forum Boarium, the cattle market. It was clean and utterly absent the chaos and stink that had once characterized it. 

Each day butchers had lined this street, plying their trade with all manner of ware selling and grocers. There was the ever-present roar of voices arguing price, the constant hammer of blades striking meat to cut it into sell-able shape, a cacophony of animal grunts and groans, and insects buzzing as they feasted on flesh before it reached human mouths. With it, the pervading and unavoidable smell of noxious blood and organs, meat sitting in the sun and animal waste. A noisy wasteland for the senses to abide.

Yet that was not the only blood spilled here on this most unsacred ground.

Years ago while digging under the meat market, archaeologists found the skeletal bodies of men and women of both Greek and Gallic origin. They had been buried alive, part of a series of human sacrifices that spanned a few centuries. One set was sacrificed during a war with the Gaul waged in the Po Valley, another set given to the Gods of war and fortune during the Second Punic War, and the third set given to stave the triumph of the eastern European Scordisci who warred against the Romans in Thrace in 114 BCE.

I felt pity for these decayed people, their body and blood a cruel offering to foreign Gods in a savage world that cloaked itself in civility. Wolves in sheep clothing, nothing more, set to conquer the world or lay waste to it. Could these sacrificed spirits be soothed by the knowledge that they had served a purpose grander than may be found in the mere life span of one man or woman? 

What angry shades patrolled ancient streets, whispering the crimes committed against them into cracks and crevices, feeding on a depthless hunger for an eternal atonement that never came? 

Waiting for apologies from people long dead themselves. A guiltless ancestral clan, those Romans.

Possibly the ghosts vanished when Rome was destroyed and retribution summarily given. Offerings to the one true and eternal God. It was hard to determine the angle of mercy in all of this, or the worth of retaliation.

What kind of celestial scale existed that could balance the sins and crimes of the many against the violent end that came swiftly upon them to grant forgiveness? Pagans had no absolution, not even amongst themselves, and so there was nothing. No hope, no future, no promise from the hand of mercy to deliver salvation that would give the soul a joyous flight from a tormented body. 

Pagans had not been the only ones to suffer, but innocent Roman Christians, as well. This was not a war of Pagan and Christian, but Roman and Barbarian. Had not the Bishop of Rome himself, Leo, grappled with the question of what to do with the nuns of North Africa who had been raped by the marauding Vandals that cut a path of carnage westward to Carthage? Yes, Handmaids of God who had lost the integrity of their honor. There was little pity to come from the church patriarchy. 

Men of power decided that these raped nuns would be greater in spirit and body than Holy Widows, but below Holy Virgins whose bodies remained intact and unsoiled. Be more praiseworthy in humility and shame, the Bishop advised, and do not dare to compare the tainted violated body to those of pure uncontaminated virgins.

What was that spiritual missive? This is my body, this is my blood, and Lord God illuminate us lost and drifting souls so that we may find our way to light.

No matter my senseless hopes, the dead remained dead with bones turned to dust. Where was this light of God for which many wept?

Dēlicta māiōrum immeritus lues, Rōmāne… [5]

++++++++++++++++++++

“Sed nunc ego sōlus in historiā et in praeterita tempōra ambulābō. [6]” I spoke aloud, a part of me relishing the feeling of the Latin falling effortlessly from my tongue. I lavished in the roll of the Rs and harsh consonants. 

The middle-aged woman next to me smiled, though she did not know what it was that I said. I found her confusion charming, and so I smiled back at her.

This is not my Rome, and yet the silhouettes of what once belonged to me were everywhere. The cloudless night and its darkness did not deter the crowds our enjoying a stroll through beautiful Italian streets and commons near and on the Capitoline Hill. Linked arm and arm, couples ambled at slow pace. Lights guided the eye toward landmarks and attractions, more elegant in their presentation than ostentatious. 

Yet that was Rome, at its heart. Always alive, always whispering its histories into your ear if you could but listen. Beneath the hum of cars and electricity was the voice of the eternal, as eternal as me, and yet a mere relic. Did Rome too possess a tired soul? is that why it gave itself over so effortlessly to ruin and misinterpretation? Could the skeleton of something long dead evoke any envy or appreciation? 

I certainly hoped so. Or else all was lost.  
____________________________  
Translations  
[1] Through this Beloved Eternal City.  
[2] I do not want to take Telesina as wife: why? She is an adulteress. But Telesina gives (herself) to boys: (okay) I will (marry her). (Martialis, Epigrams 2.49)  
[3] Truly, Rome will always be the center of the world.  
[4] Let Rome grow strong by Italian valor. (Virgil, Aeneid XII)  
[5] Romans, though innocent, you will suffer for the crimes of your ancestors. (Horace, Odes 3.6)  
[6] But now I alone will walk in history and into times past.


End file.
